Seth goes into another depression. And I’m pregnant with our third child. I’m supposed to be taking it easy, but Seth is so demanding! Inevitably, I wind up in the hospital, two months before the baby is due. I’m in the hospital for eleven weeks, and have three brushes with death. Little Rafi is small and has problems. But Seth seems to be better!
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Homeless... at Home
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I saw the baby today. I'm in my sixth week, and there she is, looking like ... well, more like a gummi bear than anything else, I guess.
They're doing genetic testing because I'm over 37. Seth is against abortion, because if his parents had known about his vision problems in utero, and had opted to wait for a more perfect baby, he might not be around. So no matter what these tests show, we’ll go ahead and have the baby But the tests can eliminate worry if the baby is OK, and let us be prepared if she's not.
Seth has been good lately, but I can't imagine how he would manage if our third child had a birth defect. That would strain even a healthy marriage where there's communication and sharing and mutual support. Or maybe it would davka pull Seth out of himself. Give him something real to concentrate on. But that's what Rabbi Ezra hoped fatherhood itself would do for us, and it has only made things worse in some ways.
Oh, well, we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.
There's a bridge that might be just up the road, though.
As they were locating the placenta, for the test, I heard a phrase that sent a zoom of dread through the pit of my stomach - "Oh, good. It's placenta praevia." Placenta at the opening. Convenient for taking fetal blood from the placenta, but …
"Did you say placenta praevia?" I asked. My pregnancy with Leora had been placenta praevia, and I had to lie down for the last month. We had been planning to go to the US for Seth's sabbatical year from the lab, but we had to cancel our plans when I gave birth early.
"Yes, but that could change. It's nothing to worry about."
If it is a low placenta, it’s good to know about it so early.
The phone rang yesterday afternoon and a woman's voice said, "Yesh lach ben." You have a son. A crash of thoughts kept me silent for a moment. Suddenly the blob of 'fetus' has been upgraded to 'son'. A son is ... like Eli. A warm holdable little boy you can love with all your heart.
That crashed with the thought, "… then Leora won't have a sister." Till I saw that little teddy bear last week, I kept thinking, what if it's twins! I could get my second boy and my second girl! I felt guilty hoping for something Seth definitely wouldn't want. Couldn't convince myself that hoping for it will in no way influence an existing situation, so I don't need to feel guilty.
And these thoughts collided with what the voice on the telephone hadn't said. Whether he's OK. Maybe that's how they tell you he has Down's Syndrome or something worse - just tell you the gender. "Is he... OK?"
"Yes, I guess so, that's all that's written here: gender: male."
Ah good! So I have a healthy baby boy!
Today's ultra sound, a month after that first one, indicated that the placenta is still low. Unless a miracle happens and the placenta decides to defy the laws of gravity and float upwards, this is officially a 'guarded pregnancy'.
But I feel confident. I’m getting weekly shots to discourage contractions. They make that constant crampy feeling go away.
For now, I don't need bed rest. That'll probably come, but the more I can take it easy now, the longer I can go without having to lie down all day.
Phew! That's something I want to avoid, with two little ones to take care of. For now, I guess it would be enough to just switch jobs with Seth. He does cooking and dish washing and shopping which just require standing or walking. I do the cleaning and laundry, and bathing the children and dressing Leora. Picking up their toys.
I get home an hour before Seth does, so there will be an hour each day when he's not there to help me. I'll just have to take it easy as much as possible when I'm alone with the children. And when it does get to the point that I'm bedridden, I don't want to be alone with Eli and Leora. I'll ask Mom and Dad to come if they can, for the last month or so.
I think we can work it out.
I told Seth what the doctor said about resting. He seemed annoyed. At me? At the doctor? The placenta? Fate? Whatever, it didn't seem a good time to detail my plan for switching jobs around. I'll let him get used to the idea that I'm going to have to take it easy for the duration.
I think it's important that I show him that I'll still try my best to keep things going smoothly around the house.
I see that I haven't written for a couple of months.
That line in Desiderata that says that fears are often born of fatigue and loneliness - I have to remember that, when I feel so fearful. I am really tired and lonely right now.
The pain is getting worse as the pregnancy progresses. Constant pain tires you out, so. It’s better the first couple of days after I get my shot. I've been cheating. I'm supposed to get the shot once a week, but on the sixth day I'm so uncomfortable that I say to myself, "What if something comes up tomorrow and I can't go in for the shot. I'd better just go get it today." I hurt all the time, but it's worse when I'm bathing or lifting the children or carrying the laundry basket or squatting to pick up their toys. The hours that I'm at work are better - just sitting on the bus and sitting at work.
The pain is bad enough, and constantly wondering if the baby is OK. But I'm afraid Seth might be sinking into some sort of depression again.
No matter what problems come up, the biggest problem I have to deal with is always Seth's reaction to it. That first miscarriage when he behaved so strangely, any time I'm sick, anything that has to be repaired - car, appliances, etc. And now this.
He has been so uncommunicative and remote since the beginning of the pregnancy. Then the past couple of weeks he's been coming home and fuming because I'm not doing 'my jobs' as well as I should.
He came home yesterday and started kicking at the toys on the floor and muttering. "What's the matter?" I asked.
"Every room of the house is a mess!" he growled.
Last night on Star Trek there was a character who wore a gizmo that translates Alienese to English. Where can I get one to translate Sethese to Caring-husbandish. That accusation would come out, "What can we do about the toys scattered around the house? I know you can't bend down and pick them up without hurting yourself ..."
No, come to think of it, a normal able-bodied husband would just come home and start picking them up. They're his children, too!
Yesterday evening I was glad the radio was on full blast, so it wasn't so obvious that he was angry at me.
After the children were bathed, dressed, storied, sung to, kissed and tucked in, I went down, full of dread, to Talk To Seth. There he was, at the sink, washing a plate with his eyes closed as he listened to music. Round and round and round the already clean plate with the sponge. And I had just finished bathing a two and three year old who can't get in and out of the deep Israeli tub except by being lifted.
Sometimes I wonder what Seth gets out of music. I'm transported by some kinds of music. I get sweeping idealistic thoughts. A feeling swells in my chest that prompts me to aspire to new heights. I'll promise myself to be more human or more task-oriented or more gentle or less self centered. I sometimes see myself, and events in my life, as a corny movie, fading from scene to scene.
What does Seth get from his operas and concerts? Inspiration? To do what? He stands there with his eyes closed and he can clean one plate for five minutes. I've watched him. Where is he? Is there music that could inspire him to be a helpful father and husband?
Seth tends to go for the Sturm und Drang type of music. If Wagner weren't objectionable as having been an anti-Semite, we would probably listen to the Der Ring des Nibelungen all day. Maybe he imagines himself as an invincible, larger than life super hero. "Here he comes, to save the day – Mighty Seth is on the way!" Maybe he sees himself in his true form - magnificent and powerful. Correcting all of us misguided lesser ignoramuses in the world.
So I stood there next to him at the kitchen sink, waiting for him to notice me. Finally, "Seth, I have to cut down. I'm doing too much." Seth's tight-lipped huff reminded me that he's been trying to tell me the exact opposite. "I was thinking - if we could just trade jobs," I said in a rush. "I'll do the shopping and cooking on Fridays, and I'll do the dishes. You can bathe Eli and Leora and put them to bed, and do the laundry and wash the floors." His lips tightened in to an even thinner line. "No, I can do the floors," I backtracked. "And I can put them to bed. It's just the baths and the laundry." I waited for an answer.
He finally said, with cold, angry finality, "No." As though Leora had asked him for the tenth time if she would be allowed to smoke a joint or play with a chain saw.
If this is another depression like the one he was in before the children were born, it couldn't have come at a worse time.
As I get bigger and bigger, leaning over the tub to bathe the children is torture. But Seth won’t help at bath time. And he won’t help with laundry – he leaves me to schlepp the heavy basket out to the lines. Maybe I just won’t do his laundry. It would save me a load a week. He can do his own laundry on Friday.
Any bending over is awful. But not quite as awful as having him come home and roar about the toys on the floor. Finally I hit on a plan; just before he arrives, I take the floor squeegee and push all the toys into one corner of one room.
But the worst part is fearing for my baby. Any exertion could cause bleeding that would endanger him more than it does me. At any time, the baby could be starting to die because I'm not doing as the doctors told me. The bleeding starts when you don't even know. So you live in fear of every motion. It's a primitive fear that I can't expect Seth to appreciate.
Is he trying to harm me and/or this child? Every day of this pregnancy is like the worst menstrual cramps. Worse as I get bigger. Sometimes by the end of the day I just sit and rock and moan.
Maybe Seth does feel badly about how he's treating me. He's buying me a lounge chair!
When I was nursing Eli and Leora, I wished I had a rocker or recliner so I could lean back and cradle the baby in my arms. I'm sure the baby feels the tension when the mother is uncomfortable - just perched on an uncomfortable seat, waiting for the feeding session to be over so she can stand up and get the kinks out.
We drove to a big furniture store yesterday evening, and from the questions Seth was asking, it seems that he's already done some shopping around. I guess these days that he has been coming home late, he's been out browsing furniture stores.
At least, once this poor baby is born, he'll get the TLC he deserves.
I feel bubbles of happiness. Seth does want to be nice and take care of us, doesn't he. He just doesn't know how to show it.
Ah! The inviting thought of sitting with my feet up and leaning back and lounging.
I don't know if I should write this entry, or just tear the last one out of the notebook. I feel so stupid.
Last night I noticed a brochure on the table, with a picture of a lounge chair circled. “Solid teak arms – not just a thin veneer.” I asked Seth if he had ordered the chair.
"Yes. Brown leather."
"Wow! Leather! Thanks, Seth!" I hugged him and my bump.
"Why are you thanking me?" he asked suspiciously.
"Well, it's nice. That you remembered that I’ll need a comfortable chair ..." He was giving me a disgusted look. He hates to be thanked. "For the baby ..." I added, my hand unconsciously going to my bump. Our bump.
"It's not for you! Who said it's for you?" he reared back in disgust. I'd gotten way inside his large bubble with that hug. "I've been wanting a nice leather chair for a long time. For watching TV. I never said it's for you."
It was all I could do to keep from crying. I guess this pregnancy has got my emotions all out of whack. For the past week this chair has symbolized a hope that Seth does want to take care of me and the new baby. Well, he just dashed that hope.
Maybe it just didn’t occur to him. But in that case, he would have recovered: "Oh ... yeah ... well, of course, we can both use it. It'll be nice for you and the baby." Or later, as we're going to bed: "I'm sorry if it sounded as though I wanted the new chair to be only for watching TV. Of course it'll be great for you to be able to nurse the little guy in comfort."
But that's not it, is it.
I always love the Heidi-plot movies where the crotchety misanthrope falls for the charms of a child or animal who brings out the good in him. (Violin music goes here ...)
But that's not what's going on with Seth, is it. His selfishness isn't just a thin veneer.
Oh, well, it'll be nice, anyway, to have the chair. For whenever the baby and I can schedule nursing sessions around Dynasty and the news. Sigh. When something seems unbelievable, the best thing is ... not to believe it.
Eli came downstairs yesterday morning and said, "Ima, I'm not drinking enough. My pee-pee is brown!"
In this hot dry country, every mother's first question, when a child complains of headache or dizziness in the summer, is, 'Are you drinking enough?' And even a four year old knows that dark pee-pee means you should drink more, or you could get sick.
I looked up from the medical encyclopedia I was checking, to see how big the baby is at five months. Whoa! Eli is yellow! I thought of what Seth's mother exclaimed when she first saw baby Roger, "Oh! He looks as though he has a suntan!" Then they told her the baby was jaundiced.
I flipped to the Hs in the book on my lap. "Let me see your eyes." The whites were yellow, but I didn't really need that diagnostic. Eli was the color of an expensive Dijon.
I read the encyclopedia entry out loud. "So my kaki will be white? All the color from my kaki goes into the pee-pee?"
We had a discussion about liver function. By the time this child hits first grade, I'll have transferred the entire contents of my brain, and half of Britannica, into his head.
Poor Eli felt worse and worse as the day wore on. Was too weak to go upstairs without help. Obviously, I'll be home from work for a few days till he's better.
So, it's the doctor for us, this morning, as soon as Leora is at day care.
I haven't written in a couple of weeks. Poor Eli has a really bad case of hepatitis. He's so thin and weak. Can't keep food down, even a very lean diet.
Taking care of Eli at home is tiring, and I have to take him to the doctor or to the lab every couple of days.
I love having this extra time with Eli, but I wish we were both feeling well enough to enjoy it.
Eli naps during the day, and I can rest then, but when he's awake he's so weak that he needs help with everything. Getting into bed, onto the toilet, going up the stairs, getting in and out of the bathtub - and he needs several baths a day because he's throwing up. I'm in my fifth month now and every exertion is so painful. Sometimes sharp pains right in front of the womb. Mostly just a crampy ache - getting worse as the week between shots wears on.
Today I read Eli my all time favorite story - Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. I love that little mongoose. His outlook on the world. Fearless. Matter of fact. Responsible. Kipling describes all of the animal inhabitants of the garden as having such human characters.
I even see myself there, don't I. "… Chuchundra, the musk-rat, creeping round by the wall. Chuchundra is a broken hearted little beast. He whimpers and cheeps all night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never gets there."
That's me with Seth, isn't it. I should stand up to Seth, now, no matter how angry he gets, and just tell him I need to rest. I can't do all this. I hurt! My unborn baby is suffering.
Also, of course, I have to take poor Eli along when I go for my shots and for my weekly checkups. Dr. Green was shocked when she asked whether I'm resting, and I told her that I'm constantly on the go, hoisting a sick four year old around all day.
"Where's your husband???" she frowned.
"Well, at work ... or ... watching TV ..."
"Shlomit, this is not your baby, it's your baby." That doesn't come out right in English because the second person singular is the same as the second person plural. She was saying it's not my baby, it's our baby. "Just because the baby's in your womb doesn't mean it should be your job alone to guard him during this endangered pregnancy." She petted Eli's shaggy blond head, "Go home and explain to your husband that he must stay with this sick child while you rest." She scribbled some notes on my card and looked up at me.
"It’s not that simple," I whispered.
Her expression changed to one of such empathy! She placed her hand on my arm and squeezed. "I see," she whispered back. I suppose a women's doctor has a view into many different domestic situations.
If my face had shown fear and sadness before, this act of sympathy nearly had me breaking down. It would probably help more than a shot of Depolut to just let go and cry, but I don't think I would ever stop once I let myself start. And I didn't want to start crying in front of Eli's big brown concerned eyes.
"Does your mother live nearby? A sister? Is there no one who can help you?"
I shook my head, not trusting my voice.
She squeezed my arm again, and sighed, before tucking my card into my folder as I left.
Why can't Seth empathize with my situation? If not with me, then with his own unborn child? Or with some primal image of the male defending the female during the reproductive process.
Someone I worked with years ago came in one day and announced that his wife's pregnancy was officially a 'guarded pregnancy'. Everyone understood that until that baby was born, Shmulik would be missing alot of time. For months, he shifted his day so that he was home with his wife until noon when the older children came home from school to help watch the youngest. Some days Shmulik didn't come in at all. It was obvious that this was a normal reason to take time off from work.
But maybe I'm not giving Seth credit. Since the beginning when I wanted to switch chores and he seemed so angry, I haven't asked him, in so many words, for help. As I trudged up the hill to the car, Eli lying back in the stroller, his long legs hanging out, I resolved to speak to Seth. Ask him to stay home with Eli just for a day or two so I can go to work and rest.
Rest. I just want to crawl into a hole and rest. Not move a muscle for anybody.
I had planned to find a good time to approach Seth to plead for a couple of days of rest. But of course I blurted it out at exactly the wrong time. Not that there would have been a good time in the past few months; he's always so surly and angry and distant.
Eli and Leora were finally in bed, and I sat down in the kitchen, hugging myself and rocking to try to ease the crampy ache in my lower back and front. Trying to breathe as Jessica had taught me at the Lamaze lessons four years ago, to control my reaction to pain.
Seth turned from the counter with the juice pitcher and a package of cheese and headed for the refrigerator. He saw me huddled there and asked, disgusted, "Now what?"
"Seth,” I was breathing deeply. Heart thumping. Partly pain and partly nerves. "Could you ... maybe you could ... stay home with Eli for a couple of days. At some point. Or just one day, even."
He looked at me as though I had suggested he amputate a limb and cook it for dinner. "Stay home from work?"
"Just to, you know, be here with Eli. To take care of Eli. So I can go to work for a day and ... rest."
"Shlomit ..." he enunciated slowly, expressing incredulity that I could be so dense ... "What would they think, if I did something like that?"
"Who?" My whole world right now consists of this family, including the smallest member inside me. Who else could possibly have anything to do with this?
"At work, Shlomit! What would they think if they found out I had stayed home to baby-sit for some kid?" He spat out the 'some kid'.
Shoulda-Said Department: Maybe they would think you were a normal husband and father, Seth.
No wonder Seth can't feel any responsibity for a fetus. He can't lift a finger to care for a living, breathing four-year-old. What on earth am I doing, bringing another child into this marriage?
Seth closed the refrigerator, which, in his astonishment at my suggestion, he had left standing open. He stomped up the stairs, muttering.
I sat there for a couple of minutes, my mind a blank, until Seth bellowed from upstairs, "Are you planning to sort this laundry that's all over the bed?"
"Yeah. I'll be right there, Seth."
I am so so so so so so glad that Seth didn't stay home to take care of Eli!
Now Seth has come down with hepatitis. And he can't say he was infected from spending extra time with Eli.
I'm also glad I didn't swap schlepping laundry for washing dishes. Seth was in charge of making sure that Eli's dishes were washed thoroughly, so the rest of us didn't become infected. If I had been doing dishes, and Seth got sick, I'd never have heard the end of it.
On the other hand, if he had given me even a day or two to rest, maybe I would be better able to hold up. Because now, in addition to all I was doing until now, I've got to take care of Seth.
At least I didn't get sick. Dr. Green said that could be really bad for both me and the baby.
But the selfish, childish part of me keeps thinking that if I had gotten sick, I would be the one lying in bed all day and I would HAVE to rest and Seth or somebody else would HAVE to take care of Eli and Leora and everything else. I say I can't, I can't, I can't. But I have to. So I do.
I'm in pain all the time, now. I get weak dizzy spells. Maybe I'll just keel over at some point and somebody else will have to take over.
When Seth gets to be feeling well enough, I've got to talk to him. I see several possibilities:
We could just do less. Use paper plates, wear clothes for a few days, ignore the dirty floors. Bathe the children twice a week. Put Eli's mattress on the floor so he can get in and out of bed by himself. I'm already serving Eli his lunches at the little children's table so I don't have to lift him up onto a chair. Groceries can be delivered if that would help. We can order pizza for Friday night! We've got to brainstorm this.
Or, we could hire someone to clean and do laundry, and even to help me with Eli. Just until the new baby is born. Most families where both parents work have cleaning ladies! Maybe we could apply for a visiting nurse or something.
Or, we could invite Mom and Dad or Jeanie or whoever would come, to help out.
Or ask the neighbors. I'm sure if they knew what was happening right here in their own neighborhood, they would be glad to help. I would certainly help a neighbor with medical problems.
We could hire transportation to take Leora to day care. I could take taxis to the doctors instead of wrestling with the car and the booster seat and the stroller. Instead of having to find parking and walk blocks and blocks pushing Eli.
Seth will gripe about the money and the principle of not spoiling yourself (which he always seems to apply more assiduously to other people than to himself), but if I lose this baby, what will a few hundred dollars matter?
We have to put things into perspective!
I'm on the bus to work. For the past month that I've been home with Eli, I've had this vision of work as a haven of physical rest. I'll just sit at my terminal and only my brain and fingertips will have to exert themselves. Eli is still at home, but Seth is feeling alot better, and the doctor told him he should stay home until the end of next week so he doesn't have a relapse. Seth actually agreed to let me come in to work and he’ll watch Eli who is also feeling much better.
I left them both sitting in the double bed with drinks and books and the TV.
OK. Enough scribbling. This lady is going to doze the rest of the ride to work!
Well, I wrote that a week ago. Seth stayed home for two days and then did his macho thing and went back to work. Big man flits off to 'work' and leaves me here with the real work. He brags about how he called the doctor from work and pretended he was home in bed, and that the voices in the background were from the TV. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, I'm not laughing.
Eli, if anything, is worse. He's weaker and is throwing up again.
I took him in with me today when I got my shot. Poor child, he was a dishrag. He's so sweet. Doesn't complain. A couple of weeks ago I made spaghetti for his lunch. It's hard to find food with no fat. I put his spaghetti in front of him. But I crave proteins, of course, but didn't want to eat cheese in front of him. So I put the cheese behind a cereal box and was sneaking cubes into my mouth. Eli said, "It's OK, Ima, you can eat cheese. I know I'm not allowed to have it." So sweet. He's had it so rough. My heart just aches for my good little sweet little boy.
Happy Birthday, Eli. For your present you get - the Mumps!
It turns out that it’s not just a relapse of hepatitis.
So I’m back to lifting the poor kid all day and cleaning up after him.
And my body is rebelling. Walking from the car to the clinic, today, pushing the stroller - I felt shockey. Like a wave of weakness that I just wanted to obey and sink down under.
There’s no chance that I’ll carry this baby to term, is there. I'm just into my sixth month. Can I go through four more months of this?
But if Seth's tantrum is because I'm having this third child, it'll only be worse once the baby is born. If Seth doesn't let me take better care of this baby after he’s born than he does now, what kind of life will the child have?
But we discussed having a third child, didn’t we? How can I trust him when he agrees to something and then change his mind?
Often he answers a suggestion with a response that obviously means the opposite. "Fine." In that dismissive tone that means it’s anything but fine with him. "Go ahead!" spat out with the unspoken, "...I dare you." Sometimes he mutters a regretful, "I can't stop you," or, "I have no control over you." Usually I know to read between the lines. Did I miss it, this time, and hear what I wanted to hear?
Somebody once told me of a colleague who hadn't wanted children, but his wife went off the pill, and got pregnant, figuring he would change his mind. The father said, "OK - this is your child." When I heard the tale, the boy was six, and the father / sperm-donor had never spoken to him, touched him, referred to him, looked at him. Never acknowledged his existence.
When I heard this, I thought the story must be exaggerated. Now, seeing Seth reject this baby, I believe. That a man who can hold down a job and laugh at jokes and read the paper and buy gas and vote and talk about football and fill out his 1040 and mow the lawn like a regular human being, could then go home and turn into a monster. Can stick to his principles, his campaign, in the face of all the stimuli that should cue husbandly, fatherly behavior.
But Seth usually behaves strangely when I’m not well. Instead of helping out, he becomes more demanding. Last year when I had the flu, I couldn't find anything to read among his science fiction and war books, so I re-read Little Women. He accused me of pretending to be sick so I could lie in bed and read.
I guess Seth is in touch with the child in him …
Sorry about all these crazy notions about Seth. Things have settled down in the three weeks since I wrote that. Eli is back at kindergarten. I'm back at work. As for Seth - husbands sometimes go a little bazooie when their wives are pregnant - having an affair or buying a Jaguar. I haven't heard of a husband who turned on the pregnant wife, but who can understand men?
Oh, well. I'm just into the seventh month. This baby is due on the 4th of July. Today is Kay's birthday - April seventh.
I'm more hopeful now that he'll actually be born and survive. Now that Eli is healthy again, it's only in the evenings when I have to schlep children and laundry, and of course Fridays when I clean, so it's bearable. The pain is better after my weekly shot. I just wish it would be over with. Three more months.
It's a month later, and I hope those words didn't jinx anything.
During the children’s bath last night, I felt waves of shaky shockiness come over me, and really thought I was going to pass out. After I somehow got them bathed, I just wrapped them in their towels and handed them their pajamas, and told them to go interrupt Abba's opera and have him dress them. And I lay down. Seth came roaring up the stairs shaking Leora’s Bloomies in the air: "What’s this all about!!!!". He did take care of them, though, and I went to sleep. The bleeding started in the night.
They talk about feeling fear in the pit of your stomach. With me, it's the tailbone that goes tingly. I lay there until morning, just staring into the dark, not moving a muscle.
This bleeding episode seems to have brought Seth back from wherever he's been since October. He seems as worried as I am. He came with me to the doctor, even though it's Friday and he should have been shopping and I should have been cleaning. Dr. Green said, “Complete bed rest from now on!”
We sat on a bench outside the clinic afterwards and tried to figure out what to do at this point. How we can reorganize the household so I can stay in bed.
Darn. This is the conversation that was supposed to have taken place in November!
At least he's with me, now. I worried that I would be alone for the whole birthing process or that he would refuse to take care of Eli and Leora while I was in the hospital.
Well, I have enough to worry about, now. Whatever was going on with him all winter, maybe it's over.
Gee! If I had known my fortunes could change so precipitately, I would have started bleeding months ago!
I feel like the poor cousin who has just won the lotto! Here I am, lounging in bed and everyone is waiting on me hand and foot. Poor Seth is doing everything around the house. He sends Eli and Leora every few minutes to bring me juice or to ask if I need anything. Of course I didn't need such spoiling all along - I just wish I could have had some TLC in small doses so I wouldn't have started bleeding so soon.
Maybe that's what Seth just realized - this baby is no longer a fetus that would be whisked out of existence with a D&C if the pregnancy ends now, and we would all go back to normal. If he’s born now, he could survive, and a baby who is two months premature will cause way more upset than a later term baby.
Seth's uncle Henry is one of our favorite relatives. When Seth was a child, he and Henry were very close. Henry is a scientist, and no doubt influenced Seth in his choice of professions. I had heard all about Uncle Henry from Seth and from his mother (very different pictures of this bachelor black sheep) years before I actually met him.
What's funny is that - I'm just realizing as I write this - Seth and Henry are about as different as two people can be. Henry is small and dark and cheerful and quick and lively. Disorderly because he has always got a dozen things going on at once. Friendly - starts up conversations with everyone he encounters. After every trip or outing, he has tales of all the new people he has met. He has people-oriented adventures just going to the supermarket. He analyzes everyone and everything. Loves life and loves different types of people. He's very accepting of everyone and everything.
Gee - maybe Seth was looking for an Uncle Henry to marry when he married me - or am I flattering myself? Henry and I get along so well. One of us will say something, and the other says, "Yes! That's exactly what I've been thinking!" Our words tumble all over each other when we talk - sharing insights and sparking each other to new insights.
So I’m lying here in bed, waiting for him to arrive.
Oh - I think he’s here. I hear a diesel engine out in the street that could be his taxi. A car door slamming. Waiting for the doorbell …
The phone just rang. Seth answered it down in the kitchen.
Wait – I can hear Uncle Henry's voice through the window, "Hello, Seth? This is Henry!"
"Where are you?" from the kitchen.
"We need directions. I'll put the cab driver on ..." from the window.
I tried to shout to Seth, but was afraid I would dislodge something, so I sent Eli down to tell Abba that Uncle Henry is at the phone booth across the street.
Henry is down in the hall now, greeting Eli and Leora.
It feels good to have another adult here. In case Seth goes back to the way he has been ...
No. He won't. I think Seth has gotten a shock from seeing that he has really caused damage this time. This isn’t his lab, where the difference between running at 20 joules and at 25 are just some numbers on the screen. He's being so helpful and kind, now. This is the real Seth. This is the man I married. Just let this baby not have been damaged and I won't try to have any more children. I’ll never do anything that could rock Seth's boat and send him back into that depressed mode.
Maybe after the baby is born and things settle down, Seth and I will be able to talk about what happened, as I should have encouraged him to talk about the other times he ... got bad.
I started bleeding again this morning, very ‘briskly’, and I’m now lying in the pre-birth ward. All of that bed rest, once the situation had already degenerated, did little good, of course.
As Albert Einstein realized, problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking [or acting…] that created them.
It's May Day. My due date is the Fourth of July. If he's born now he'll be nine weeks early. I don't want to think about that. Please, no!
It's true what our grandmothers told us - that a good meal improves your frame of mind. I was glum and weepy when I first got here to the hospital. Worrying about myself and the baby, and about Eli and Leora at home. Then the husband of one of my seven roommates came in lugging a huge pot of hot couscous and gave me a big bowl full with chick peas, cabbage, pumpkin, squash and a piece of chicken. Now I'm ready to take on the world!
I miss having Eli and Leora buzzing around with offers to help. At least the bed here isn't sandy. After the children had been climbing in and out all day, I felt as though I were sleeping on the beach.
Riddle: how is trying not to give birth early, like being a test pilot? Answer: it’s incredibly boring and incredibly nerve-wracking at the same time.
More bleeding started in the night.
My roommates and I yelled and yelled for a nurse - each yell accompanied by a spurt of blood.
When the nurse finally came, I was sort of half asleep, half passed out. Cold sweat. Weak and having to remind myself to breathe. She tried to take my blood pressure but couldn't find my pulse. She called the doctors who were on rounds with students, and I was paraded across the hall to the labor rooms, an escort of med students around the gurney. From far, far away, I could hear the doctor shouting, "She's in shock. Run ahead and tell them to set up an infusion. Prep her for surgery."
Surgery? Good – they were going to do some kind of operation to help my baby. I asked, groggily, “What kind of surgery?”
Dr. Graff put his hand on my cheek and said, gently, “A C-section.”
“No! You can’t take him out now! He’s too small!” I started to cry. After all of this, I was going to lose my baby?
The crying raised my blood pressure, and I started feeling more conscious. They got me infused and I've been chugging away here on the monitor for two hours, the only excitement being the occasional med student coming in to peer at my crotch because they know they should be checking something. They gave me a shot of steroids to strengthen the baby’s lungs.
The doctors speak English with each other on rounds when they don’t want the patient to understand them, but I listened in as Dr. Graff told the others, “Shlomit will be here until she …” he paused to check if I was listening … “uh … gives birth … or …” he trailed off and the others nodded. “She has had several episodes of heavy bleeding and this morning she went into shock. The baby is 31 weeks.”
As I listened between the lines I realized that they had really thought they would lose me if they didn’t end the pregnancy … one way or the other.
I feel so much more human and less sorry for myself after Seth has been here. It has something to do with the fact that he helped me wash my hands and face, and brush my teeth. And brought some contact with the outside world.
For the next six weeks, the only good thing that could happen is nothing.
Today's report reads much like yesterday's, without the gurney ride. I woke up with lower back pain at 02:30, rolled over to rub my back - couldn't reach it with the hand with the drip - and started bleeding. By 5:30 I was feeling faint and they started another drip. They gave me a shot and I slept till Seth got here at 14:00 and fed me lunch, cleaned up around my bed, brought goodies and necessities. He left just now.
I'm so weak. These little blood losses send me shocky. But each day I can hold on earns the baby 30 grams.
I should have heeded the feelings of foreboding of the past few days. Walking back to the car from the doctor, when my conscience kept chanting, ‘I shouldn't be walking so much.’ When I saw those plastic pants in the drug store but thought, ‘I'll wait to buy baby supplies -- what if after all there's no baby.’ On the evening before the bleeding started – that feeling of dread that every action of getting the children ready for bed was endangering me.
I hope this baby is really getting stronger and stronger each day and not weaker, as I am. How will I go through surgery with no strength to start with? There are two units of blood waiting for me in the labor room. Seth might be outside somewhere - the babies are nursing so no visitors are allowed in. His visits are so nice.
I guess it was ill-advised to try and have a third baby. Our two are so nice. Seth was happy with things as they were. But having children is a sign that you have hopes for the future. We've been married for twelve years, but Seth and I don't yet seem like a real couple. I had hoped that having children would cement us together. And that having a third would make our family feel like a real family.
I feel much better now that Seth has been here. Instead of greeting him, I asked him to empty my bed pan and bring me TP. I had decided that if he balked at that I was going to tell him to go away and not bother coming back. Your priorities get a bit turned about when you're flat on your back. He brought letters and magazines. Eli went to the Lag B'Omer bonfire last night and cooked a potato in aluminum foil.
Moving right along, here. Two milestones - they took out my IV - so now I can get up and turn cartwheels any time I want, without getting tangled in tubes. And I put my feet to the floor for the first time in four days - so they could change my bed. I sat on a chair next to it. Felt sick and dizzy. Then found my legs to be too weak to stand up to get back in. Had to just fall over into bed. Can't hold up my book to read for more than a few minutes.
Seth surprised me by coming today - with snap shots, newspaper, Depolut.
It's been a good day. A bit of bleeding. Sunday will start the baby's 32nd week. Hemoglobin is coming up. Arm doesn't hurt much, though it's still puffy from four days of IV. I guess I'm getting into the routine of the place.
Uncle Henry visited today. We spent two hours gossiping about the rest of the family. He brought flowers.
I want to see my children! It's been a week. Uncle Henry and I talked about them. I like him so much! He's better hospital company than Seth, but I can't ask Uncle Henry to empty my bed pan.
Even my arm, which had been puffy and sore for two days, deflated while I was talking to Uncle Henry. I think I was lying on it without realizing.
Today I am a human being. As long as I don't have any bleeding I am allowed to get up to shower and use the toilet. The woman who gave birth yesterday - a week behind me - came to visit. The baby was 1.25 kilo - the size they reckon mine to be - and doesn't need oxygen!
When I got here, scared and newly bereft of home and family and the outside world, I marveled at Betty who had been here six weeks, and seemed happy. By the third day, after bleeding episodes, threat of surgery, trials and errors with bed pans and infusions, and dropping things and not being able to pick them up, no attention - I was a wreck.
Now I'm accustomed to the routine, and I'm feeling better. Events outside seem remote and unimportant. I'm still enough afraid of another bleeding episode that I really don't want to be home.
Poor Seth, dealing with everything. We decided to ask Mom and Dad to come.
Dynasty tonight. I love their hospital. Maybe one of these days I'll risk lying on my left side. I'll save that thrill for this evening. I don't sleep all day as I did at first.
Today I took a 100% real shower.
Seth visited and showed me some cute skirts he bought for Leora, because she has no summer clothes that fit her except Eli’s hand-me-downs.
All winter, I've been putting off anything that didn't absolutely need to be done. Leora has had a rash for weeks that I had meant to take care of after the baby is born. I guess that will be sooner than I had hoped.
Mom and Dad will arrive this afternoon. Seth will be able to work full days, and let them baby-sit me and the children. With Mom and Dad here, I would dare to go home if the doctors are willing to let me.
What a day! Mom and Dad came here, straight from the airport. They can stay for two months. Mom stayed with me while Dad and Seth went to pick up my two wonderful children at day care. Eli is so frail looking and has such a ducky little voice. Leora is grown up with a ducky voice. Eli was glad to see me and kiss me, but Leora didn't seem to be sure who I was at first. Eli asked about all the interesting things in the room - my bedside table and bed pan, the oxygen fixtures, curtains, funny elbow-operable handles on the faucets. Leora liked my pretty sheets and nightie, both with ‘Ministry of Health’ printed all over them in rainbow colors.
Well, here we really are again. I was home for a wonderful week, being cared for by Mom. Then last night, after no particular exertion, I started bleeding again.
Here at the hospital I was greeted as an old friend. Forms filled out, the monitor lub-dubbing away. They had to cut my nightgown so they wouldn't have to pull the blood-soaked thing over my head. Seth came in for awhile, then they told him we would 'wait and see' so he went home.
This morning, ultra sound showed a weight estimate of 1.700 kilo – 3.7 pounds - two weeks behind average. They put me on a magnesium drip. I don’t feel contractions now, but have pains in my chest, and my pulse is uneven.
They let me eat supper - first meal since supper yesterday.
I was on monitor for nine hours. The pummeling I got while she located the sensors causing lots of clotty blood. I slept in spite of the monitor, automatic sphygmomanometer, and drip pump.
I'm going to get blood and lunch.
Mom and Dad just left after a quick but very welcome visit. The last two days have been pretty hectic. I'm in the mode of the women I was pitying three weeks ago - having their bodies bombarded with chemicals that seem to throw everything out of whack.
I've lost track of the order of things the past two days. There's no day and night, just cat naps. At first they said the chest pains were just from lying down for three weeks. Seth was here and said they had to do something for me. EKG and X-ray showed the magnesium was causing congestive heart failure. I got a shot to get rid of the extra fluid. Yesterday Seth assisted at my first sitting up meal in 3 1/2 weeks. This morning I got a few hours of sleep to make up for the past two nights.
Well, here we are! Our 1.7 kilo baby is in the preemie ward doing OK. Cute.
I'm having a sun bath after a much awaited shower. Beautiful day!
And I’m lucky to be here to enjoy it! A woman always prays “gomel” after giving birth – thanking G!d for saving her life. Usually nowadays it’s a formality, but for me it’s relevant. My surgeon came to see me in the recovery room and just stared at me for a moment before informing me, “Yecholt lamut!” – you could have died. I was on the operating table for two hours. They were pouring blood into my arm and it was flowing out my belly. They were forced to do a hysterectomy to keep me from bleeding to death! So even if this tiny baby doesn’t make it, there will be no more.
That's the second time this month that they thought I might die.
This C-section recovery is really easy because of the hysterectomy. No bleeding, no contractions, no pains from incisions in the womb. He was born 48 hours ago, and except for weakness from all the lying down, and a leg that's all swollen up, I feel well.
I guess I'll walk around a bit and go back in.
A week after those innocent words were recorded for posterity, I envy my healthy, mobile self of back then. After my sun bath, I walked up and down the hallway. ‘Only way to reduce swelling in that leg,’ they assured me. Then I lay down for a bit. A nurse invited us to the nursery to pick up sample diapers, and I hopped out of bed and offered to bring some for my roommates. While there I peeked in at my little boy for a second time. Still cute.
Then I lay down again and woke unable to take in breath because of sharp pains in my back. There was no way I could scream ‘nurse’ for a half hour, and I didn't even think I could get the attention of my roommates - most of whom were asleep – knocked out by pain killers.
So I got up and hobbled to the nurse's station and mouthed that I couldn't breathe. The nurses came spilling out of the dining room and wheeled me back to my bed on a desk chair. Doctors came, started the ubiquitous infusion plus oxygen. I have a pulmonary embolism! A hunk of the blood clot from the DVT that was puffing up my leg broke off and lodged in my lung.
They did a mapping -- breathing in radioactive stuff so they can photograph how far the air gets. Getting a shot of radioactive stuff so they can photograph where the blood gets to.
From there to ICU-respiratory where I've been ever since. Maybe tomorrow I'll go back to the maternity ward.
I've got electrodes on my chest, a rectal thermometer, the heparin drip, an arterial line into my wrist and a line into my neck, an oxygen mask. Pretty much what the baby's got. They lay me back flat and check arterial pressure. They test blood taken from the arterial line in my wrist. Of course, to have those lines put in was no picnic - the doctor scrubbed, gloved, hatted, masked and gowned himself - had to try three times to find the artery in my wrist, then sewed it in. Excruciating! You feel pain deep down where you didn’t know you could feel pain. All your alarm bells go off saying, ‘This isn’t right!’ There was local anesthetic but it didn't seem to help. The neck was mostly just awful because it's awful having something like that done so close to 'you'.
I had expected relief as soon as they stared with the heparin, but the embolism was still building up.
The first day and night they came and took X-rays every quarter hour to clip to the light wall. The doctor kept bringing other doctors in and describing the progression. ‘See, here the clot is still growing. Here the heparin is having an effect and the growth is slowing. At this point we started being hopeful that she would survive. Hopefully the next X-ray will show an even more optimistic picture.’
So … I really could have died. For the third time this month.
The first two days were pretty bad. I could get very little air in, even if I tried to ignore the pain. The oxygen kept me from feeling faint, but it's frightening not to be able to fill your lungs.
Then the doctor said he was going to ask me to do something unpleasant which would help me in the long run. He put me on a pump that senses when you're inhaling and gently pushes more oxygenated air in. It was heavenly! I could even doze off a bit, because the machine took over my struggle to breathe.
They measured the circumference of my leg every day and it was going down. By Thursday night I was breathing a little better and they gave me a pain killer shot so I could sleep. Seth came every day. On Sunday Mom and Dad came. And Monday and today.
Yesterday was emotionally the worst day all month because I found out I won't be able to nurse the baby at all. I had been pumping - with help from nurses, since I couldn't put any pressure on my right arm with the arterial line sewn in there. I was anxious to get back to the maternity department so I could use the electric pump. The first three days I was radioactive, so I had to get rid of the milk anyway. I asked the doctors to check whether the anticoagulants get into the milk and whether they’re bad for him. Yes and yes. OK - if I have to pump and dump for a month - till he's home, maybe, I'm very willing. But it turns out I'll be on pills for six months. So that's it. I'm getting pills to stop my milk. Imagine. Since my first look at that tiny boy I've yearned to feed him. What a crummy mother I've been to him so far.
Seth says he touched the baby yesterday. Wow. I didn't expect to describe a whole, full week in a couple of pages.
I feel as though I've spent 90% of the month of May crying. I just have to think of Eli or Leora or the baby. Or Seth. Or myself.
I'm looking at the pretty mesas I make on the respiration graph with the hitch in my breathing. When I hold my breath I guess it picks up my heart beat - goes up to 70+ and shows waves.
If all the blood tests are OK, maybe I can go back to maternity today so Eli and Leora can visit me.
I'm back in the maternity ward.
Oh, how much better I feel now that I've seen all of my children. Seth and Dad brought Eli and Leora. I hadn't seen them in two weeks. Anyone who hasn't had children can't imagine that longing. I need Seth very much these weeks, and he's been wonderful to come every day. But to be prevented from seeing Eli and Leora and my baby – that’s a deeper need. This is real life. I'm so glad Seth married me and that we had children so I could live a full life.
I held little Rafi today. He's so cute! Tiny. Looks like Seth.
He hasn't had his brit - his circumcision - so he really doesn't have a name yet. But we know we're naming him for Seth's grandfather who died this spring, and it's hard to just be calling him 'the baby' when he's your own child, so we're calling him by his name. Rafael – ‘G!d will heal’. For short - Rafi.
I awoke in the middle of the night with awful pains in my fat leg. They gave me a pain killer and after awhile I finally felt drowsy. I slept and now my leg doesn't hurt, but I don't dare move it to check if it’s OK. I guess I'll wait till I'm ready for a shower (ahhh) and then just jump up and go. I just hope they're right this time, that walking is the only cure for a deep vein thrombosis.
Eli called me Grandma a few times yesterday. Leora looked so mature. Had her hair back in a ponytail. Told me Leora's new dress was pretty and Ima's PJ's were pretty.
Even with this sore leg, it's so absolutely great to be strong and mobile and able and allowed to do for myself - organize my pack and bedside table, get a drink, raise and lower my bed, go to the nurses' station, the bathroom, the babies! Yesterday I ate in the dining hall.
Maybe my leg hurts because I was too active. Maybe if I only get up when I really need to, it won't hurt.
Well, I provided some entertainment for the troops this morning. I headed toward the bathroom with my ditty bag but couldn't put any weight on this leg, even tightly wrapped in elastic bandages. So I borrowed Dalia's infusion pole - it has convenient hooks for bath articles - and leaning on that, I moved along by Uncle Wigglying my left foot along. Luckily the cleaner lady was washing the floor so I slid along quite nicely. By the time I got to the bench in the hall I was exhausted and flopped down to rest. All the nurses had clustered around, so I asked for some suppositories. Yaffa, my favorite nurse, asked how I'm doing. "Great!" They helped me to the WC but I figured they would ascribe a lower priority to a shower than I did, so I lurched in there by myself and took a laborious sitting-down shower. I'm very skinny. Then I heard nurses yelling "I don't know - I left her on the first toilet!" "She's not in her bed!" A nurse found me and I asked for a towel.
I started back to my room afterwards but paused on the bench to black out. They put me on a swivel chair with wheels and rolled me to my bed. Such service! They said, "Don't try to be a heroine." I said, "I'm trying to be clean."
After a day of diligently doing the exercises prescribed by the physiotherapist - movements invisible to the naked eye, but excruciating none the less, the doctor said I wasn't getting enough anti-coagulant with just the pills. So they started me on a drip again.
Even if I weren’t confined to the bed by the IV, though, the pain in my leg keeps me from getting up or even dangling my legs over the side of the bed.
Women from the neighborhood have been visiting. I can sort of ignore the pain when I have company. Bikur Holim is a mitzvah. I see why, now. If you're sick for a day or two, you just want to be left alone, but when it goes on for weeks, it's so nice to look up and see someone you know coming in that door!
I imagine a satellite that can photograph emotions and feelings like those pictures of heat leaking from poorly insulated houses. It sees a hospital glowing red with pain. A cemetery with dots of blue for sadness. A high school on SAT Saturday is yellow with fear.
Shabbat Shalom.
Shevuah Tov.
Well another 24 hours of drip - that's another 40x24x60 = 57600 drops of heparin solution and there's absolutely nothing to show for it. The worst thing I could do, they say, is to get out of bed and walk on it.
Meanwhile hot compresses, pillows under my foot and an aspirin every four hours has at least made today painless physically.
I'm really a bird in a gilded cage. I have the verandah room all to myself. Big picture window onto a beautiful park. Cool breezes.
It's such a pleasure to breathe! Every now and then I take a deep, sweet, painless breath and it's delicious. Like a glass of water when you're thirsty.
The nurses don't even bother to come all the way to the end of the room when they change shifts. Just wave in my direction and say "Shlomit's just the same." They bring in bladders of Heparin and take out pans of pee.
One day 50 years from now they'll come and notice that the bedpan is empty and they'll realize they can turn off the IV pump and clear out my body and give the verandah to someone else.
I feel bereft of the connection between me and Rafi because I'm not nursing. Just the fact that anything you eat affects the baby, and that when the baby eats it affects you - taking calcium, etc - is an extension of your closeness from before birth. Even though Leora was in the incubator for two weeks, I was pumping milk for her so I felt the connection on a physical level. Now Rafi and I are totally disconnected. I can take in any medicine or garbage I want and it doesn't affect Rafi. There's no reason for me to eat well, drink milk, etc. He doesn't need me for that.
This month has taught me some lessons I hope I never forget. Here is a list of some of the most wonderful things in the world:
- two lungs full of fresh air
- to be without pain
- to be with your family
- to get up and walk and do things
- to take care of yourself
- to not have any tubes in you
- to take care of other people
- to hold your baby
- nice nurses
- a hot shower
- husbands, parents, children
I look at these women who are still lying in bed on the third day after section - one hasn't even been to see her sixth baby. I'll borrow their pain if they'll borrow my bed riddenness. The nurses who try to get my roommates out of bed say, "You should have seen Shlomit! Trying to get up and take a shower and see her baby with only the use of one leg!"
He's so cute! They brought Rafi to see me this afternoon. He's two weeks old and is almost back up to his birth weight. He's off the infusion, but still has the feeding tube down his nose for milk. It’s so nice to be back here in the maternity ward and to know what’s going on with him.
They switched my IV to the other arm. It has been hurting for the three days it's been there, but with my arms the mess of bruises and holes, this new place is just as bad. It took four tries to get it running.
I don't really care so much if they're bumbling around with my leg, as long as that baby is steadily making progress.
Your mood can be affected by things you think are trivial. Now that I've seen the baby and have an IV that doesn't hurt so much, I'm content to just lie here for the duration.
Today Mom and Dad and Seth came, but just looked in the window because the babies were nursing and visitors weren't allowed in. It turns out that all the improvement they're attributing to the heparin is really due to the aspirin. Today I tried to do without - took my last one at midnight. Now I'm in a good deal of pain even though I took aspirin at 7:00.
It seems to me that a big bowl of leeches could have me walking around in no time.
Lymphadema. My whole leg is blue again and the foot is like a balloon. So sore!
But I'm feeling happy. I've seen everyone but Rafi today and Seth talked to him and petted him. He's back on the IV - doesn't take to Materna -- SEE! He wants his mother's milk!
Eli and Leora were very interested in my IV. It was so good to see them and touch them and kiss them.
Dad brought me The Count of Monte Cristo. I could identify with someone imprisoned for half a lifetime.
Seeing my leg up on the pile of pillows reminds me of my first night home after Leora was born. My C section incision was hurting so much when I coughed that Seth built me a backrest of pillows so I could sleep sitting up. I awoke in the night and noticed that he had used every pillow in the house except Eli's - not even saving one out for his own head, till I persuaded him I could do with one less.
The start of my sixth week in the hospital. And may this be the week I go home!
I leave Edmond trying to find a way to get to the Isle of Monte Christo and hunt for the treasure. It's been a long time since I've written - I loaned out my pen and it didn't come back.
It’s been a week of waiting. No progress on my leg. Mom and Dad come every morning, Seth comes every evening. Eli and Leora came twice. Mom and Dad went to the used book store and got me some. They have been here a month.
The other day I was waiting for Mom and Dad's visit, and the thought flicked through my head, "Maybe they'll bring me new paper dolls and a coloring book".
I was doing so well for a few days - not crying at all - now I'm at it all the time, again. I started crying when the doctors told me at rounds that it'll be a few more days yet.
They brought Rafi today. Seventh time I’ve seen him. He’s three weeks old.
I ache. Everywhere, but especially my right hip - the thigh is blowing up like a balloon. I hardly notice the pain in my IV. It has hurt all five days it's been in, but there are no good places left on my arms.
Entry in the 2088 edition of a medical textbook: “A hundred years ago, a simple thing like a thrombosis could require weeks of hospitalization. All they knew to do back then was fill you with anticoagulants and wait. Nowadays of course we use leeches."
What will I do, in what order, when I'm allowed out of bed - shower, visit Rafi, go down the hall and phone Eli and Leora. I've been over all these high priority activities so often in my mind it's almost like doing them.
Let's see if I can write with a hand newly IV'd. I wish Seth could be here more. Another day mostly crying.
This really might be my last Shabbat here. I'm back on pain pills. Finished Count of Monte Cristo. Saw Mom and Dad and Eli and Leora when they came back from the beach.
Nurses keep saying, "I have few days off - I hope not to see you here when I get back." And then they get back and here I still am.
I'm back to livening up the place - I felt faint (but clean!!!) on my way back from a shower this morning (yes, Virginia ... you know: running water? rinsing in non-soapy water?). So I sat down on a chair. I guess I would have sat on the floor if the chair hadn't been there. Dr. Graph saw me and offered his arm but he did a truly lousy job as escort. After a few limping steps toward my room, leaning on him, I was suddenly dreaming that I was falling in blackness "through the air, through the air" and I let out a wail of a cry that woke me up and I found he had unceremoniously dropped me on the floor.
Lots of doctors and nurses standing about. I laughed. Most interesting thing that has happened to me since I had fainted on the way back from my previous shower three weeks ago. They said if I was laughing I must be OK.
I guess my antics of yesterday have become legend. Two shifts later, when the night nurse saw I was getting ready to go see Rafi for his 6am feeding, she said "No! Go after breakfast! Eat a good meal first" I promised to eat some cookies, but she pleaded, "I can't pick you up by myself."
Well, I've had a workout today! I lurched down the hall at 8:30 to feed Rafi his breakfast (I almost lost mine when I saw my reflection over the scrub sink for the first time in a month. What a pale, skinny flaking fright!)
He started to cry and I put him on my shoulder and he went to sleep - so cute - his little fists in front of his little face. Poor baby has probably never slept on anyone before. Does he even know I’m his mother?
At 10:00 the physiotherapist came to teach us how to hold a premie - till a month after due date you have to encourage them to stay rolled up in a ball. She said I was holding Rafi just right - by then he'd gotten all slumped down. Now I'm back in bed and so far no ill effects.
Happy 1-month birthday, Rafi.
Ruthi and Nahum visited yesterday.
I just spent 2 1/2 hours with Rafi. Held him for two hours deep in slumber, then fed him.
My leg is hurting. I sat with ace bandages on all that time and my legs have ridges and the knit pattern. My thigh hurts, just above where the Ace bandage stops. And has a red racing stripe down the inside.
Dr. Graff said I might go home on Sunday!
I wonder if Rafi is as thrilled with becoming more and more human, as I am!
The racing stripe on my leg gets longer and longer, hotter and hotter, and sorer and sorer each time I walk. I have to put on compresses again.
Rafi also had lots of company for Shabbat. Mom and Dad saw him when they walked me to the nursery at 2:00, Seth came there at 3:00 just as Rafi finished eating. Then I visited once more 6:00-9:00. Fed my baby three times in a row.
I haven't written in my diary, the last couple of days. Now that I can get out of bed, I don't sit around much. Mom and Dad brought the children - the big children - for a picnic on the lawn outside my room, yesterday and I was determined to join them, even though I had alot of pain in my left hip. I missed doctors' rounds. I had wanted to ask them about the hip, but first priority was the picnic. It was physically hard and tiring, but oh, so nice, to be part of the family again. To be with Eli and Leora on a halfway normal basis.
When I got back to my bed, the nurse told me that the doctors had said that my complaints about my hip are obviously just manifestations of hesitancy on my part to get back to real life outside the hospital. I've been in for so long, that the prospect of being home with a small baby is frightening, and I've become a hypochondriac.
The doctor had pointed out the window to where I was sitting on the blanket in my nightgown, with my leg wrapped in Ace bandages. Eli and Leora were racing to the big tree and back. He said, "Look. She can go for a picnic easily enough. Obviously she's not really in any pain."
Don't you hate that! When you struggle to do something, and your only reward for succeeding is for someone to say that if you could do it, it must have been easy. That picnic was no picnic.
The nurse was angry, because she sees the effort I go through to grin and bear it when the children are here.
Blessed art thou, Lord our G!d, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this time!
Finally, after six weeks, I'm home! I have to wrap my leg when I get out of bed. The pain in my hip left is worse. My doctor made a house call - said I should rest, but not stay in bed all the time.
Oh, it's good to be home! I came home just in time, too, because even after extending their stay by two weeks, Mom and Dad have less than a week left.
Famous last words. After I wrote that, I gave Rafi a bath. My tiny boy! My left leg felt heavy and tingly. Not the leg that had had the thrombosis, but the one that has been aching for a week. It got worse as I knelt there by the tub. Mom had offered to give Rafi his bath, anyway, so I asked her to finish, and I went and lay down. Dad brought me a bolster to raise my leg up. I decided that next time I get out of bed, I had better bind up both legs.
Within minutes, the whole leg was swollen and very painful, and it was obvious that I needed to be back at the hospital. I called the ambulance and off I went, minutes later.
By now, I know the ropes. I know that keeping Americanly quiet doesn't help because they just figure you're doing fine. So I lay there in the Emergency room and yelled, "Ow! Ow! Ow!" and "Ayy-ayy-ayy!"
I yelled that I needed something to put my leg up on, but nobody brought me anything, so I somehow picked up the metal chair by the bed – with one hand, lying flat on my back - and laid it sideways under my fat leg.
Finally Dr. Kasif appeared - an old friend. I yelled, "Get me out of here! Do something chick-chuck to get this leg back to normal and get me out of here! I'm supposed to be at home!" He smiled and said it might not be that easy. "It's good they at least gave you this chair to put your leg up on - couldn't they find anything else?"
So here I am back in the hospital. In the medical wing this time. I just lay here moaning and shaking my leg back and forth for a couple of hours. It hurt so much!!!!! Then I started singing loudly to distract myself from the pain. My three roommates seemed to be unconscious anyway. Mom came in and I started to cry from the pain and frustration. She petted my hair and said, "Oh, you poor girl!" Here I am, I'll be 38 in two days, and I cried even harder at the sympathy. There's a limit to the amount of sympathy Seth can bestow - partly because of how he is, and partly because we both know that he caused all this.
There. I said it. Seth caused all this.
If I hadn't been running around for the seven months of the pregnancy, overexerting, so that my body was fighting to clot my blood all that time, so as not to bleed, and if I hadn't had to lie down so early, and if I hadn't been immobile for three weeks, I wouldn't have gone into the operation in such a clot-prone state, and wouldn't have wound up with blood clots in my legs and lungs.
Seth caused all this. All this pain - physical and otherwise. Putting Leora and Eli through it all. And poor little Rafi, and having my parents spend two months over here and not be able to really visit with me. Not fair. So Seth could be big man or whatever was going on with him during that pregnancy. Big man who wouldn't take over a few jobs around the house. It's poetic justice that now he has all the responsibility of the house and children, and now a newborn.
My baby! At least, in the maternity ward, I was down the hall from him. Now he's home and I'm here and I can't see him at all. My baby!
And the hysterectomy. All the pain I had throughout the pregnancy was obviously because my womb was being stressed. They took out my womb. It's not there any more. I'll never be able to be pregnant again. There will be no more children. Not that I would risk another pregnancy with Seth so unstable. But somehow it was important to know the possibility was there. Part of being a woman.
And I can't even nurse this tiny frail baby who needs me so much, because of all the anticoagulants.
And if it’s true that Seth's mother’s illness when he was small caused him to be so clingy and insecure – well, what is this long hospitalization doing to Eli and Leora?
It's not fair, Seth! You’re not being fair to any of us.
It's my birthday. Mom and Dad left yesterday - coming to say goodbye on their way to the airport.
Yesterday a woman in the bed next to me asked how many days I've been in the hospital. I told her it's almost two and a half months.
All the weeks I've been here, my mind has kept up this Dorothy chant - "I want to go home!" I'm always asking the doctors, "When will I be able to go home?"
And yet, when I actually think of my real home - our actual house, furniture, husband, lifestyle - my mind says, "No ... Not that home, your real home." I'm yearning for some architypical home that has elements that this one doesn't have.
The seven months of my pregnancy with Rafi, that I lived in that house, it did not fulfill the requirements of home. It was not a safe haven for me and my children. It was not populated by loving, supportive people. We were not a clan, defending our members from the dangers outside. It was not a place to rest safely.
As much as I have desperately longed to get out of this hospital, I'm weary thinking of going back to Seth, where I know that I always have to be on my guard. When will he flip out the next time?
Being near death three times like that, really changes your perspective on life.
When I first came to the hospital, and was sinking into shock, they almost took Rafi out, in order to save my life.
During the C-section itself, when they couldn’t get the hemorrhaging to stop, they did a hysterectomy to save my life.
Three days later, when the pulmonary embolism was gaining territory faster than the heparin could slow it down, it was touch and go for eight hours.
I'll never again take my life for granted. I might not have been here to see Eli and Leora and Rafi grow up.
OK. I'm back home again, two weeks after I wrote that.
Injecting myself with heparin. Wearing heavy stockings in a hot Israeli August. Thinking twice and three times before getting up and hobbling to the next room.
Rafi had his brit yesterday. The mohel who would be doing the circumcision came to the house a couple of times a week, while I was still in the hospital, to check if he was healthy enough. He would examine the baby, and then look up at Seth, and before announcing when he thought the baby would be ready to be circumcised, he would ask, "When is his mother coming home?" Seth would tell him that it would be a few days yet, and the mohel would look down at the baby, considering, and then proclaim, "Well, I'd say it would be better to wait for a few days to do the brit." Of course, you have the brit as soon as the mohel decides the baby is healthy enough. As soon as possible, after the eighth day. But the mohel was using his discretion to find Rafi to be healthy just a couple of days after I got home, so I could be there!
Rafi has problems eating. To get him to suck, you have to put a finger into his mouth and if he starts sucking on your finger, sneak the nipple in next to it.
It's heavenly to be independent. To be with my three children every single day.
Seth is being very nice, now. I'm sure he was scared by seeing me almost die three times.
Maybe this was finally the shock he needed. Maybe he'll be a good husband and father from now on.
I'm doing the nesting now, that I couldn't do when I was pregnant. Maybe because Seth is so nice, and I feel I really want to settle into the house. Eli and Leora and I are painting the walls in the whole house. I'm using whitewash so they can help. It doesn't matter exactly where it goes - it's easy enough to clean up. They're really helpful! They do the bottom meter or so of each room, and I do the rest. It's hard to go up and down the ladder with these stupid fat legs and chain mail stockings, but it's just so good to be able to be active!
I've started going in to work three days a week for half a day. The drive in, an hour without having my feet elevated, is excruciating. The woman who took care of Rafi when I was in the hospital takes care of him while I'm at work. She's very nice.
Everything seems to be telling me I should take some time off from working to be with these three wonderful children.
My sick leave ran out, and I still can't walk well enough to work full time.
And Seth has been in a good mood since Rafi was born. I think that might be partly due to my limited involvement with work. He never liked the time and attention that I devote to my job, even though I've only worked 80% since Eli was born. Seth seems happier now that I'm more available for the family.
Seth and I even sat and discussed the pros and cons of my quitting, as we've never been able to discuss anything. The only con is that I won't have a salary coming in, but, hey - that's one reason we waited so long to have children in the first place. So we would have a nest egg that would let us raise our children properly.
So we decided. I'll quit, and then after a year, I'll look for something closer to home.
Another reason to be home for awhile is that Rafi is still having problems eating. He's not gaining weight just on the Materna, which he's finally able to suck pretty well, so they want me to give him solid food. But it doesn't go well at all.
Mealtime is so scary. When I put food in his mouth, he just keeps the food in his mouth. He can’t breathe through his nose, because it's perpetually stuffed up, so eventually he opens his mouth to breathe, and he breathes in the food and he chokes. Sometimes he stops breathing for so long he turns blue around the lips. Seth once took a medic course and he showed me how to turn Rafi upside down and pound his back. Poor baby. He's hungry and stuffed up and choking and then I pound him like that. Then I sit there and cry right along with him.
Some days I really can't get anything into him. What if he starves to death?
After a really bad session when he’s crying too much to eat anyway, I just give him formula the rest of the day and wait for Seth to come home, before I try feeding him again, because Seth knows CPR.
It's so different from feeding the other two babies, where nursing was such a pleasure for both of us. I hate to torture my baby this way.
Here I am. I'm a real mother, now, like Mom was - not just dabbling at mothering in my spare time.
I'm surprising myself. It feels so natural. I love computer programming, and I'm writing some programs at home in BASIC. But just having time to be with Eli, Leora and Rafi on a normal basis is heavenly.
This 'quality time' nonsense is just that. You need quantities of time with your children.
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Copyright 2020 by Shlomit Weber
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